Playwrights Horizons announces 2022-2023 season

The season will include five works, three of which are world premieres.

Playwrights Horizons has announced the full lineup for its 2022-2023 theatre season. Beginning in October, the company will present five works that "consider and radically challenge the very idea of normalcy," either through exploring themes of identity and justice, being set in different worlds, or experimenting with nontraditional theatrical forms. Three of these works are world-premiere plays, and a fourth is making its New York premiere.

The season begins with Mia Chung's Catch as Catch Can in October 2022. Daniel Aukin directs this show about two New England families whose conventional lives suddenly erupt into chaos. All the roles are played by three actors, and Playwrights Horizons's production will feature an all-Asian cast as the play's Italian and Irish working-class characters.

Also in October is the New York premiere of Downstate, first presented in Chicago by Steppenwolf Theatre Company and National Theatre. Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Norris's play takes place at a halfway house for registered sex offenders who have been released from prison. When a man shows up to confront his abuser at the house, the line blurs between justice and retribution. Pam MacKinnon directs.

Next in the season is Agnes Borinsky's The Trees, directed by Tina Satter. The story takes place across four acts, centering on two siblings who fall asleep in the park next to their father's house and literally become part of the landscape, unwittingly establishing a utopia amid mercenary surroundings. Both Borinsky and Satter are making their Playwrights Horizons debuts with the production, which goes up in February 2023.

A month later, in March 2023, will be the world premiere of Julia Izumi's Regretfully, So the Birds Are. The three adopted Whistler siblings are dealing with a host of family problems — arson, affairs, incest, murder — but are searching for something to ground each of them in this "farcical tragedy." Jenny Koons directs, and both she and Izumi are making their Playwrights Horizons debuts.

The final production in the season is the world premiere of John J. Caswell, Jr.'s Wet Brain, a co-production with MCC Theater. The play combines a family drama with science fiction, as the hardened members of a family discover the only place they can fully deal with their father's alcoholism is in outer space, as he might be repeatedly abducted by aliens. This play combines humor and horror and will go up in May 2023.

Exact performance dates and casting for each of these productions has yet to be announced.